Miracles do happen! Last Wednesday, we received a notice that our Federal TTB Brewer’s Notice was approved. We filed the application on January 19, less than three months ago. Currently, this process is taking many breweries around the country six to eight months.

The TTB is the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, and they control the license to brew commercially in the United States and collect federal beer excise taxes. This approval came in so much earlier than I was expecting, I’m still not entirely sure what it means for us right now.

The biggest impact for us is that it removes the possibility of massive roadblocks in the process down the line, and we can start brewing as soon as we complete our build-out and get our brewing equipment installed. I’ve heard stories of breweries having everything ready to go, and having to wait two or three more months before receiving their approval so they can actually start brewing.

I want to give a huge shout out to Brook Bristow of Bristow Beverage Law. He’s helped us navigate the government permitting labyrinth, on both the federal and state sides. We’ve already received our conditional Alcohol Beverage License from the SC Department of Revenue, in addition to the recent TTB approval.

That means from a permitting standpoint, we now have to make it through the City of Greenville for our construction permits and we’re in really good shape. Brook handled the federal and state permits, telling us exactly what we needed to provide and he put it in a format to make it easy for those agencies to approve. I don’t know exactly what he did to get us approved so quickly and easily, and I’m not sure I want to